


They Still Tell Stories, Too

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Season 1 Spoilers, Season 2 spoilers, space linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years from now, on a faraway star...</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Still Tell Stories, Too

**Author's Note:**

> Companion story to [They Still Write Poetry](http://archiveofourown.org/works/346483).

He was not born Jack, but he was called Jack. Well: he was called something that sounded like it.  _Boezhak_ , or  _'Djak_  for short.   
  
Something inside him laughs every time someone calls his name; something else inside him aches.   
  
 _Jack,_  Ianto breathes; and Jack hears  _Jack_ , hears  _Djak_ , hears  _face_ , hears home.  
  
Once, when working with Tosh on a translation project, he finds himself telling her about his native language. "The Boeshane Peninsula," he says with relish. He doesn't say it like a secret, but he's also made sure no one else is in the Hub right now. Tosh savours the knowledge of the future and - unlike Gwen, and (it pains him to think it but) unlike Ianto, she will not go direct to the archives or look it up in their database. "It's redundant to anyone who speaks-will-speak the language."  
  
Tosh raises an eyebrow. "'Speaks-will-speak?'"  
  
He shrugs. "Time travel tenses. English doesn't translate them well. Anyway. Boe, right? It's the name of the country." He pauses, frowns. This still trips him up after years of English speaking; he hasn't had to use these tenses in centuries. " _Is-will-be._ And the 'shane,' that's a compound phrase -  _sh_  is 'of' and  _ane_ is 'peninsula,' and whoever decided to call it the Boeshane Peninsula was an idiot."  
  
He works out the structure with Tosh, transliterating as best he can. _Boe_ , the country;  _sh_ , of;  _djak_ , face.  _Boe-sh-djak_ , the face of Boe, but  _sh-djak_ elides to be  _zh_ , and thus  _Boezhak._  
  
"Harkness, then?" Tosh asks, a bit timidly. "I know you took that name from the other Jack Harkness, but does it mean anything? In Boe?"  
  
" _Boesheiv_ ," he says, he corrects, with a smile. " _Eiv_ , language. Or tongue. Depends on the context." He sticks out his tongue and she laughs and takes the hint and moves on.   
  
 _Har_ , child.  _Knass_ , sand. He had laughed until he cried and then gotten incredibly drunk when he'd read Jack Harkness on that RAF list of names.   
  
He was often glad that John Hart doesn't (didn't, won't) speak Boesheiv; Boe is a backwater kind of place and Boeshane even more so. Hart is from the nearest space station colony, which is isolated but a huge and bustling city nonetheless. The language of the colony is Eikthali, and so Jack and all the other  _boeshara_  learn that in school. When they are partners, Hart adds ( _will add, has added_ ) a myriad of seductive phrases to his vocabulary.  
  
The people of Eikthali are known for their poetry; indeed, Eikthali itself is known for its poetry - the language works around the tongue nicely and has a musical quality to it that lends itself to poetic phrasing.  
  
Boesheiv is mostly known for its drinking songs.  
  
Jack sings one to Owen once, long before Owen dies and (though Owen doesn't know it) shortly after Jack has finished being dead. They settle down in Jack's office with a bottle of whiskey and Owen belts out some godawful song that he says he learned in uni but he probably wrote with his friends when he was thirteen. The song Jack sings isn't much better - it translates to "Let's drink all weekend, let's drink so much that we'll still be drunk at work, and by the time the hangover kicks in it'll be the weekend and time to start again!" He worries, briefly, that Owen will ask what it means, but turns out there was no need. Owen passes out almost as soon as Jack's done singing and doesn't remember much of the night before anyway.  
  
English has its uses as a language. It's not as poetic as Eikthali, never will be as familiar as Boesheiv - no matter how much longer he's been speaking it - not nearly as good for swearing in as Italian. But it's great for telling stories in. "There's no 'Once upon a time, in a faraway land' in Boesheiv," he tells Toshiko. "I mean, yeah, there's words for all of those, but as a phrase it doesn't make any sense. Any stories in the past start out telling you when and where, like, 'Three thousand years ago, on Quam.' And that's no fun, that's just history. So we set our bedtime stories in the future: 'Many years from now, on a faraway star.' And even that sounds better translated into English."  
  
He breaks off in his narrative to look at her, and she's smiling. "How do you say that?" she asks. "Many years from now, on a faraway star."  
  
It takes him a moment to pull it together, but then he says, " _Denagras djenth_ ,  _zhemdradh_."  
  
Tosh thinks about it. "It doesn't sound as nice as 'Once upon a time,'" she admits. "But I imagine it started many wonderful stories."  
  
"I never liked stories that much," says Jack. "I was always the type who actually wanted to go out have adventures for myself."  
  
He has always enjoyed telling stories, though. There is one particularly dark moment during which he tells Martha the story of how he was impregnated by a Minx named Oooosi. (An actual Minx, from Minx Prime, not one of those street corner workers who painted themselves up and tried to pass themselves off as the real deal. Oooosi was the deepest crimson you'd ever find, and no way was that imitable by paint.) He told Martha he carried to term and delivered a little red baby with a killer smile who grew up to become Chancellor of Minx Prime.  
  
But he changed the ending, of course. None of Jack's stories have happy endings. Fifty-first century humans aren't compatible with Minx - the babies are parasitic, and they had to abort before it finished devouring his internal organs. As it was, he went into kidney failure and spent three months on desk duty before the Agency decided he was healthy enough to return to the field. He received a box of seventy-five alien prophylactics as a welcome back present from his unit.  
  
"That's the other thing I like about stories in English," he tells Toshiko. "Everyone lives Happily Ever After."  
  
"Never read 'The Little Match Girl,'" she replies with a sad sort of smile. "I know it's not written in English originally, but...never read it, if you like happy endings."  
  
Jack laughs and tells her about the time he met Hans Christian Andersen, but what he doesn't tell her is: to him, the finality of death would be a very happy ending indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to the wonderful and magnificent 51stcenturyfox, who probably has the quickest turn-around time in all creation.


End file.
